Sensorita revolutionises waste management

When a waste management company places a container, for instance at a construction site, it essentially becomes invisible. Customers move them, dispose of different waste than agreed, and the waste company has no idea how full it is or when it should be picked up.

“This creates problems for logistics and production planning, not to mention increased CO₂ emissions from unnecessary pickups. The end customer is also affected since they have to monitor the containers and place orders,” explains Lien.

Sensorita delivers an AI-driven, sensor-based waste management monitoring solution. “We make ‘invisible’ waste containers visible again,” says Lien.

Read more: The future of waste management

The solution consists of a rugged sensor with radar and GPS that can be retrofitted to existing waste containers anywhere. This sensor takes radar images of the inside of the container multiple times per hour, which are then sent to the Sensorita cloud for analysis.

Machine learning algorithms are trained on millions of radar images and can estimate how full the container is and what types of material have been discarded.

“With this information, we can provide a digital twin for each container, allowing the waste management company to plan better, improve their logistics flow, provide a better end customer experience, and help to plan downstream material recovery processes,” she says.

The solution promotes sustainability in the waste value chain which, according to Lien, is highly disorganised and dysfunctional. “Waste is actually a resource. In construction, for example, there is lots of waste and a high demand for secondary resources,” she explains.

By helping to transform waste into a resource, Sensorita promotes circularity in the waste value chain. “Waste will always be a key enabler in the circular economy. We therefore aim to be a long-term technology partner in the green transition,” she adds.

Moreover, the solution saves time and money for end users by automating the monitoring and collection of containers, tasks which take up to five hours per week. It also prevents overfilled containers and predicts waste trends based on historical data for better decision making.

The EU Waste Framework Directive sets regulations for the sustainable waste management, while the EU Circular Economy Action Plan lays out clear objectives for circularity in many industries, including construction. These are two examples of outside pressure to move quickly towards more sustainable, and ultimately circular, methods.

Sensorita is well positioned to help industries achieve this goal. “We have been getting good feedback from our first big customer, which came to us seeking materials recovery and help to meet sustainability regulations,” says Lien.

“We are the tech experts and they are the waste experts. Together we work as a team,” she concludes.